Requiem of an Insomniac
by storyduststories
Summary: Zari is having trouble coping after the events of 3x11.


**This is my second prompt** **fill for my Bad Things Happen Bingo card. If you're interested in requesting something, you can read more about it on my tumblr, which you can find on my profile. The prompt for this fic was "Insomnia".**

 **This has also been driving me crazy for months. I wanted it to be longer, but I couldn't get it to go where I wanted. I only liked the first part, so I took that, worked it up a bit more, and that's what I present to you today. I'm not sure if I'll be satisfied here or if I'll find inspiration and add more later, but for now I'm calling it a complete one-shot.**

* * *

The clock was ticking.

Zari knew it, of course. She'd had this clock in her room for quite some time now. But she'd never really _noticed_ it before.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

It was a soft, small sound, too much so to be annoying. It was like listening to someone breathe next to you. Consistent, rhythmic. Present.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

She rolled over so she could peer at it in the dark, tangling her blankets as she did so. Though her room was completely dark, she could make out the outline of the small clock on her desk that she didn't really use.

She squinted. The arms didn't look right.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Didn't she have a digital clock somewhere? She never needed an alarm for anything, but surely she had one _somewhere_. In fact, she didn't even know why she had an analog clock. Especially considering she was from the future relative to everyone else on the Waverider, it seemed so retro.

Maybe she liked the ticking.

She closed her eyes and tried to pace her breathing.

Tick.

In.

Tick.

Out.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

After a while of this, her chest felt too tight, like she was taking in too much air and not enough, and she decided she didn't like thinking about her breathing, so she stopped and rolled onto her back.

"Gideon, what time is it?"

"4:37 AM, Ms. Tomaz."

Zari frowned. "When did _that_ happen? No, don't answer that," she said, pressing a hand over her eyes. "Ugh."

Hadn't it just been 3:52? 3:16? 2:28? Hadn't she seen all those weird times on the arms of her ticking analog clock, too? Counted her breaths and finally given up and asked Gideon for the time? Her eyes burned. Wasn't she tired?

Had she slept at all?

She curled up on her other side and whined frustratedly into her pillow. Her head felt like a can of pressurized air, in which there was little to no space for thought. The blessed, infernal ticking continued while she continued breathing stale air into the little space she'd left between the fabric and her face. Around her, the room was quiet and still, artificially so.

Except for the ticking clock, of course.

"Are you having trouble sleeping, Ms. Tomaz?"

Closing the space, Zari buried her face in the pillow, ceasing to breathe at all, as though some part of her thought she could force herself into unconsciousness. She replied, her voice muffled, "What do you think, Gideon?"

"Would you like me to fabricate a sleeping aid?"

Something snapped. Zari screwed her eyes shut, her spine going rigid as though in pain and her knuckles becoming white somewhere in the darkness as she gripped the pillow with everything she had. Forcing herself to be as polite as she could, she said, "No thanks, Gideon."

"Very well."

Then, blissfully, painfully, nothing. Just pillow, just breath, just Zari and her thoughts.

Then:

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

"Gideon, what time is it?"

"5:26 AM, Ms. Tomaz."

Zari was thinking about playing violin. From the way her heart was racing, you'd think she was imagining giving a concerto in Carnegie Hall. For hours. And hours. And hours.

Circadian rhythms on the Waverider were a joke. With no sun or moon, no day or night, no 9-5 hours and no salaries or children or fascist curfews and alarms, there was no reason Zari would ever have to get out of bed. Even the times Gideon chose to give their lives some regularity were arbitrary. Until the next anachronism, she could lie there for as long as she wanted in this perpetual, exhausted malaise of tangled blankets, ticking clock, pressurized air, and racing heart.

The thought made her shudder. Somehow, it seemed a worse fate.

With an exasperated sigh she threw back the blankets, resolved to start the day. Sleep wouldn't be coming to her any time soon and there wasn't any use in trying. Doing anything was better than living in her head, trying fruitlessly for some reprieve.

Really, she should've expected this. She recognized what was happening, her body and mind's response to trauma that she didn't want to deal with, but she refused to confront it.

What had happened to her hadn't even _really_ happened.

And yet, she still remembered how to play that violin. She even knew where to find it and just how it needed to be tuned.

And Gideon's voice, so nonchalant after—well, _after_ , still unseated something in her, something small and afraid and angry.

Consciously, she couldn't bear to let her thoughts go any further than that, so she sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed. Perhaps now was as good a time as any for breakfast.

Since time was meaningless and all, anyway.

Zari wasn't sure what compelled her to do it, but as though on autopilot, she stood up and moved across the room to pull a prayer mat out of her drawer. There would be no _wudu_ —ablution, cleaning of the body—before this prayer. With the lack of any clear time and their unpredictable lives, she didn't always find time to pray, let alone to properly perform every involved practice, but at least something useful could come out of her totally sleepless night. Besides, maybe it would take her mind off things, put it towards something more constructive and centering.

Or something.

"Gideon?" Zari asked into the darkness, prayer mat in hand.

There was a pause. "This morning, you should point your mat towards the far side of your room."

Zari aligned the niche at the top of the mat accordingly and laid the mat down. She couldn't see very well, but even in the dark, she recognized the faint patterns of her mat well enough to know which end the niche was on. With the words and movements practically written into her DNA, she fell into the motions naturally. She felt the words she didn't remember learning pass by her lips with a voice that came from her, felt the rug underneath her hands and feet, and yet still, there was not enough room in her head to so much as picture what came next before she did it. Her body remembered, but there was not enough room in her head to follow along, to allow her to be present in her own rituals.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

When she finished she sat for a moment, willing herself to do _something_ , but what, she wasn't sure. Sleep? Get up? Eat? Train? Program? The pressurized air had filled every crevice in her brain, every nook where thought and will should be. It was all she could do to think:

 _Go away._

 _Go away._

 _Go away._

When she came back to herself, her foot had fallen asleep. She stood carefully, stomping until the pins and needles stopped, and then rolled up her mat and returned it to its place. She felt a little better having prayed, like maybe she'd accomplished something, but it was a drop in the ocean. She hardly even remembered doing it.

For all she knew, she might've retired to her bed and turned the lights out not too long ago, and she'd just been repeating the same hour over and over again (the ticking clock a frail anchor), desperately hoping to break the cycle by falling asleep. Or praying.

Maybe that's why she did it.

Then the next step was to leave her room, do something else to break the cycle and remind herself that somehow, as meaningless as it was, time was marching on in a nice, proper, linear fashion; to remind herself that the clock was right and she was not as adrift and absent as she felt.

So, then. The next logical thing was, again, breakfast. Might as well. That's what people normally did upon waking up, even though she didn't think she'd ever fallen asleep. There was no telling, although perhaps Gideon might know.

But Zari knew better than to trust her.

She took a deep breath and forced energy into her arms and legs, forced herself to turn around and face the darkness between her and her door and beyond it, the rest of the Waverider—unharmed, despite everything she'd witnessed and experienced many, many times over.

And she was so, so tired.

She could almost hear the notes of a perfectly tuned violin, could almost feel the fine strings under her fingers and the smooth chinrest cool against her skin.

The few steps to her door felt like miles.


End file.
